Alpha Q| Orbital Sky
Awards & Nominations
Alpha Q has received the following awards and nominations. Way to go!
Orbital Sky
SKYBOX
Summary
SKYBOX is an interactive web application that gives users the chance to immerse themselves in the exploration of the space beyond our atmosphere. SKYBOX is a satellite tracking, visualization and informational site, that combines several core features into a single cohesive user experience that sparks curiosity. Users can locate observatories in real-time; observe satellite flight paths, and learn new knowledge. SKYBOX is built using the ReactJS framework, and various other libraries to support the implementation of the application features. SKYBOX is accessible to users from around the globe and can run on most modern browsers. SKYBOX is your view of the world beyond our own.
How We Addressed This Challenge
Solution
SKYBOX is a responsive web-application built entirely in ReactJS framework and hosted on the Vercel cloud platform. SKYBOX is lightweight yet powerful and performant; users can access the application from any internet-enabled device (with enhanced support for mobile devices planned for future releases). SKYBOX leverages a few key libraries for the composition of the user interface and data visualisation. SKYBOX is a novel African application, developed by South African developers. We believe the application we have developed is merely the tip of the iceberg, and there are endless possibilities for integrating with other data sources to deliver high-quality insights and information to localised users. South Africa hosts the MeerKAT/SKA telescope array, and we envision SKYBOX being extended to incorporate observational data generated by this observatory, as one example of many potential extensions. Our unique geographical background sets us apart from the developers of other similar applications, and allow us to highlight African space innovation and inspire individuals in a discipline that is widely underrepresented in our continent.
The application we have developed is still in its infancy, there are a plethora of functional requirements on our feature backlog; at this stage our application consists of three primary features.
- Users are able to locate the last known position of any satellite in the SSC set of observatories and visualise its position and elevation on a 3D globe. There is also a "library" of these satellites for users to peruse through.
- Users are able to view a visualisation of Space Objects Score data from Space-Track.org, superimposed on each country to generate an immersive 3D graph of the data. Users are afforded a selection of categories to visualise and explore.
- User can view a current geosynchronous report from Space-Track.org, detailing the types of objects currently in Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) and a visualisation of orbital launch frequency.
- Users can view the orbital trajectory/flight path of the ISS in 3D, overlayed over Planet Earth.
The web application uses the JavaScript fetch API to initiate HTTP requests to various APIs to retrieve data. This data is cleaned and processed, and then near-instantly served to users via our application. The web application is built using a modular component-based architecture to promote maintainability, enhancement, understandability and quality.
We believe we have met the challenge head-on by building an application that provides powerful visualisations of dense data that is usually difficult to access, and even more difficult to digest by the average casual user.
We hope that SKYBOX sparks creativity and inspires interest in Astronomy, Space Exploration, Computer Science, Engineering and the intersection of these fields in individuals from Africa and around the globe; with a specific emphasis on youth and students. We believe that SKYBOX beautifully presents engaging insights to users and is the first step on their knowledge journey. SKYBOX unlocks data and information that many users are not aware of and opens an individual's eyes to the wonders of orbital science and exploration.
Shoot for the Stars, Aim for the Moon - Pop Smoke
How We Developed This Project
Development
The Orbital Sky challenge instantly jumped out at all the team-members when the challenges for the 2020 edition of the Space Apps Challenge were announced. All of the members have a keen interest in space exploration, rocket science and engineering, and this really captured our imaginations from the inception. This challenge seemed like the perfect opportunity to work with informative datasets, increase our own knowledge in the field, and hone our technical skills. This challenge is primarily a user-interface centred project - the team has significant experience with front-end application design and development; and is an area of development that is incredibly enjoyable and rewarding for the team.
Our approach to develop this application was to adopt a dual-perspective approach: the first element being how do we develop the application to support the data expressing itself, and the second being what does the average user really want from a brief foray into orbital exploration. How much of value can SKYBOX provide in five minutes of browsing? Extensive energy and thought was poured into designing the user interface and overall experience of the application.
We like to call it: No Light Pollution.
Light pollution is the presence of anthropogenic and artificial light in the night environment. It is exacerbated by excessive, misdirected or obtrusive use of light, but even carefully used light fundamentally alters natural conditions.
We took this perennial and increasingly more significant issue that affects earth-based observation and astronomy and applied it to our own application. How we do we design our application to reduce light pollution - or - how do we simplify, minimise noise, extract the essence of the data, and maximum the impact of the presentation to users. We start by applying a dark colour palette to the entirety of the application. Using the naked night sky as inspiration, SKYBOX instantly evokes feelings of night-time exploration and excitement. The terrain data used to overlay the 3D globes similarly depict the night sky to continue this visual metaphor. The UI elements are carefully selected by form and function; there are no superfluous components. Each element has a singular, focussed purpose, and this collectively creates an aesthetic, focused interface that naturally guides the user to and through the data and enhances the exploratory experience. A light typeface represents the precision engineering and meticulous design that supports orbital launches. Non-essentials are stripped away leaving the truly powerful content to shine through and inspire our users. Controls are minimal, and where required, simple and intuitive. We wanted SKYBOX to be a powerful and beautiful journey. We have thus attentively crafted the web application to achieve these goals.
SKYBOX is built using the following technology stack: ReactJS framework, JavaScript, HTML and CSS. It is a responsive standalone web application that runs natively on most modern browsing software. The application has a modern, modular, component-based architecture that promotes extension and enhancement and maintenance. The application source code is stored in a mono-repo that is linked below. Server-side processing can introduce unnecessary latency that is often severely experienced by end-users, and to maintain the immersive nature of the user experience, the technical decision was taken to forgo a client-server architecture and instead implement all data-processing on the actual client. The result is a blazingly fast application that can respond to concurrent requests and scale to accommodate large user loads, without requiring scaling of the underlying infrastructure. For CI/CD, the Vercel cloud-platform is utilised. Vercel provides git- and branch-based deployments and reliable, low-latency web-hosting from servers in the United States. Vercel was thus the ideal choice for this application; A/B testing is readily achievable and the application has a guaranteed uptime; ensuring high availability rates.
Team Alpha Q is proud of our achievement in producing a piece of quality software, built using industry best-practices in little under 28 hours. We are confident that our application serves as an excellent prototype and proof of concept for our larger vision. The sky is not the limit for the additional layers of enhancement and features we can offer users in future - there is none.
How We Used Space Agency Data in This Project
Space Agency Data
The primary data source for SKYBOX at its current stage of development is the NASA Satellite Situation Center RESTful Web Service. The application heavily leverages this API to deliver the user experience. The /observatory endpoint is used to retrieve descriptions of tracked satellites, and the /location endpoint is used to retrieve satellite location data over a predefined DateTime range.
We let the data speak for itself, and significant time was spent in the preliminary stages of planning investigating the data source and information that it surfaces. These attributes informed the application architecture and functional requirements. Space data is often inaccessible to regular individuals with minimal experience and only successfully exploited by seasoned professionals; SKYBOX aims to reverse this exclusivity by designing the application to naturally and powerfully express the data to users, that strips away the underlying complexities and conveys the key trends and ideas.
Data & Resources
Data
Satellite Situation Centre RESTful Web Service
The Satellite Situation Center Web (SSCWeb) service has been developed and is operated jointly by the NASA/GSFC Space Physics Data Facility (SPDF) and the National Space Science Data Center (NSSDC) to support a range of NASA science programs and to fulfill key international NASA responsibilities including those of NSSDC and the World Data Center-A for Rockets and Satellites.
Accounting of man-made objects that have been or are in orbit. Derived from satellite catalog and grouped by country/organization.
Space-Track.org Geosynchronous Report
Satellite Catalog Information.